Title: “The Brains of the Operation”
Prompt: The meta answer is a famous novel.
Answer: FRANKENSTEIN
Before we get to the explanation, a quick bit of housekeeping: if you’re reading this on the ACL website (as opposed to in your email, if you’re a subscriber who receives these posts by email), you may notice a new banner at the top of the site saying “Enjoy this site?🎁Gift the author a WordPress.com plan.” This is not WordPress (the hosting platform for ACL) try to scam you, this is a banner WordPress gives authors the option of adding to their site and which I enabled this month. As mentioned on our Support ACL page, running this website is not free, and the yearly fees for both (1) ACL’s WordPress plan and (2) the domain name ariadnescrosswordlibrary.com are coming due on October 1. If you would like to support the site by covering these fees (thank you!), please click on the banner. Please note that, if you do cover the fees, I will be notified that the fees have been paid, but I will not be told who paid them. But I would really love to know who to thank because this would be a very generous donation to the project, so please forward me the email receipt, both so I can thank you individually and so that I can add a public thank you to our Team Ariadne page.
Please rest assured the website fees will be paid even if I need to cover them myself. There is absolutely no pressure and no obligation, just as with any other donation request ACL has put out. You are all already supporting this site just by solving the puzzles and reading these posts, and I sincerely appreciate it!
Ok, that’s the end of the housekeeping for this month. Back to the puzzle!
Explanation: nine clues include alternative, cryptic clues featuring a body part + a word that describes the grid entry. For example, FETA includes the cryptic clue [(Cheese head?)], FETA being a type of cheese and “head” being a cryptic indicator for taking the first letter. So that leaves us with F. The green letters in the solution grid to the left (or possibly above, if you’re reading this on a phone) show the letter extractions for the remaining clues, which spell out FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley’s timeless gothic horror novel.
There were 91 correct answers and 1 incorrect submission this month. Several solvers did point out that the full title is actually “Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus.” (Publishers in 1818 coming in with some strange punctuation choices.) Alas, “or the Modern Prometheus” did not fit in a reasonably sized grid.
Congratulations to this month’s randomly chosen winner: Simon Vozick-Levinson of New York, NY! The prize this month is, as it always is, a copy of a thematically apt book embossed with FROM THE LIBRARY OF ARIADNE. I had a very hard time picking the book this month, but ultimately landed on Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Austen is of course the Jane referred to in the word “Janeites” found at 15A [Devotees, like Janeites or Maas trash], so there’s your tie-in to the grid. Austen is not generally generally known for gothic works, but Northanger Abbey was intended as a parody of classic gothic novels, and, wouldn’t you know it, was first published in 1818, the same year as the first edition of Frankenstein. (Well, actually, it was published on December 20, 1817, but the title page was dated 1818 for reasons I’m sure someone understood at the time. Close enough.) So, all in all, it did seem rather appropriate. Congratulations, Simon!
You can read Ben Chenoweth’s blog post about this month’s contest over at Crossword Fiend, where you can also leave a comment and/or rate the puzzle.
Dubious Honors
This month’s Tick-Tock Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received first, goes to Alexander M., whose answer came in at 9:12 AM EDT on September 1. The White Rabbit Award, which is awarded to the solver whose submission I received last, goes to Simon P., whose answer came in at 3:09 PM EDT on September 5, which I think is a record for earliest last submission. No late-night Saturday solves for anyone this time around?? I have no actual prizes to hand out to these solvers, they just get the satisfaction of BOOKending this month’s contest. Well done!
Can you beat their times next month??
Thank you to everyone who submitted an answer to September’s contest! And thank you to Carina da Rosa for this fun puzzle! If you are interested in constructing a puzzle for ACL, please visit our Submit a Crossword page. See you in October!
Ex libris Ariadne
Ariadne's Crossword Library 